Boxer Rickey Edward and his 5-year-old son, Menki, lay down flowers at the memorial ceremony for Rubin "Hurricane" Carter.

About 50 people — politicians, family and friends of Carter — gathered on the City Hall steps to pay tribute to the boxer, who spent much of his life fighting to clear his name and that of his friend, John Artis, after being twice convicted of killing three white people inside a Paterson bar in 1966. Carter died Sunday in Toronto with Artis at his bedside.

This was supposed to be a candlelight memorial, but the wind made it impossible to light the candles — and the symbolism was not lost on those gathered.

“It must be the Hurricane,” said Emmanuel Capers, an aide to Mayor Jeffery Jones who led the event.

Although Carter was reluctant to return to Paterson after his release from prison, many of his family members still live in the city. Among the family members at the service were his daughter, Theodora Carter, and his niece, Janice Rivers.

Theodora Carter said she had not seen her father for 10 years, when she last visited him in Toronto. She said her father was reluctant to return “because the United States hadn’t shown him a lot of love.”

She was too young to realize what was happening to her father when he was first arrested, and because of his life in prison and his seemingly endless legal fight, never saw him that much. But she said his example encouraged her to get a master’s degree in criminal justice, and she is now a social worker with Catholic Charities.

“My goal is to help children stay out of the judicial system,” she said.

Rivers said the last time she saw the Hurricane was when he was behind bars in the Passaic County Jail, where he was locked up while awaiting his second trial.

“He told me never to come back,” Rivers told the crowd. “Because he thought he was going to be locked up for life, and he didn’t want anyone to see him like that.”

Nearly 50 years have passed since two black gunmen burst into the Lafayette Grill and began shooting. When the shooting stopped, four people lay on the barroom floor; three of them would die. Race became a factor; the prosecution would later argue that Carter and Artis began shooting to avenge the murder of a black bartender killed earlier that evening by a white man at another Paterson tavern.

But the state’s case lacked physical evidence — the murder weapons were never found, no fingerprints were taken, and the clothes Carter and Artis were wearing were never tested for gunpowder residue or blood spatters. Instead, the state relied on eyewitnesses who said they saw two black men exit the bar with guns.

At the moment that the gunfire erupted, two men were across the street from the Lafayette casing an auto repair shop for a burglary. Alfred Bello and Arthur Dexter Bradley told police that night they saw two black men leave the Lafayette after the shooting with guns drawn and jump into a white car.

Paterson police stopped Carter and Artis in a white car less than an hour after the shooting; no guns were found inside the vehicle, but police found a .32-caliber bullet — the same caliber as one of the weapons used in the murders.

Bello later gave police a statement identifying Carter as one of the shooters and became the state’s star witness. But over the course of two trials, Bello would change his story many times — sometimes saying he recognized Carter, other times saying he didn’t. Carter, a Paterson street kid who had done time in prison for robbery before rising through the middleweight ranks, was a prime suspect. Artis, a 19-year-old kid just out of high school, had been a star athlete and wanted to go to college.

“Rubin was cocky and arrogant, and I think they were out to get him,” said Joe Greer, 65, who grew up with Carter and watched him box. Greer, who today is a boxing trainer, said the “they” he referred to were “the police.”

“I think they set him up,” Greer said. “They wanted to get rid of him.”

Another longtime acquaintance, Russell Grady, used to operate Grady’s Bar-b-que Pit on Governor Street. Carter used to eat there all the time, Grady said.

Grady said despite Carter’s tough-guy image, “he was a nice customer. It’s hard to believe he would get caught in something like that.”

Jones delivered a proclamation that made Wednesday Rubin “Hurricane” Carter Day. Jones, who is in a tight battle for reelection, said Carter “wasn’t just a boxer. He was a fighter,” and praised his determination to battle for freedom through two trials, two convictions and a 19-year prison stint. His fight was everyone’s, Jones said.

“He made the case that you must be proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt,” Jones said. “And two decades later, it was determined that there was plenty of reasonable doubt.”

Ultimately, it was a federal judge who found that racism had clouded the case, and released Carter from prison in 1985 after serving 19 years. Artis had been paroled earlier after serving 14 years.

In his ruling, Judge H. Lee Sarokin found that the prosecution had been “predicated on racism rather than reason, and concealment rather than disclosure” and set aside both convictions.

After his release Carter had to fend off 13 appeals before the case was finally settled in 1988 and he left for Canada. Carter and Artis became the public face of Innocence International, a non-profit that advocates for prisoners who have been wrongly convicted.